Charles Johnson - Middle Passage

Written by Charles Johnson. Themes include Fiction, Action & Adventure, Historical, African American & Black.

Product Description


In 1830, seeking to escape an unwanted marriage, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave, becomes a stowaway aboard The Republic, unaware that the ship is a slave clipper bound for West Africa.


Amazon.com Review


In this savage parable of the African American experience, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave eking out a living in New Orleans in 1830, hops aboard a square rigger to evade the prim Boston schoolteacher who wants to marry him. But the Republic turns out to be a slave clipper bound for Africa. Calhoun, whose master educated him as a humanist, becomes the captain's cabin boy, and though he hates himself for acting as a lackey, he's able to help the African slaves recently taken aboard to stage a revolt before the rowdy, drunken crew can spring a mutiny.
Middle Passage won the 1990


From Library Journal


This out-of-the-ordinary adventure yarn describes the harrowing experiences of one Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave who wanders to New Orleans from rural Illinois in 1830. He becomes entangled with Isadora, a prim, devout schoolmarm with her eyes set on marriage. To escape this fate, Calhoun ships out on a leaky vessel that turns out to be an illegal slave ship under the direction of deformed, perverted Captain Falcon. The horrors of the voyage are chronicled in grotesque detail in Calhoun's journal, and his outlook on life undergoes a radical alteration as a result of the trip. A colorful, imaginative tale that strains credibility, particularly at the end, but succeeds as entertainment.

- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.


About the Author


Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, cartoonist, screenwriter, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. A Macarthur fellow, his fiction includes
Night Hawks, 
Dr. King’s Refrigerator, 
Dreamer, 
Faith and the Good Thing, and 
Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. In 2002 he received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Seattle.


Review


Long after we'd stopped believing in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that." (
Chicago Tribune)

"A novel in the honorable tradition of Billy Budd and Moby Dick... heroic in proportion...fiction that hooks into the mind." (
The New York Times Book Review)

"A rousing adventure yarn that resonates with and echoes the spirit of early sea stories...Johnson has fashioned a tale of travel and tragedy, yearning and history, and done so from a different, rarely explored viewpoint....Middle Passage is a story of slavery, often brilliant in its structure and riveting in the way it's told." (
San Francisco Chronicle)

"Middle Passage is both unexpectedly funny and highly intellectual." (
Washington Post)

"Highly readable...by turns mimicking historical romance, slave narrative, picaresque tale, parable, and sea yarn, indebted to Swift, Coleridge, Melville, and Conrad." (
Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"A vivid and compelling work." (
Essence)

"A fascinating allegory of the way black and whites came together in this country...Johnson's remarkable novel challenges us." (
Usa Today)

"A savage parable of the black experience in America...blending confessional, ship's log, and adventure...in luxuriant, intoxicating prose." (
Publishers Weekly)

"Middle Passage resonates...a spirited adventure tale daringly spun off the realm of myth." (
Newsday)


From Publishers Weekly


A savage parable of the black experience in America, Johnson's picaresque novel begins in 1830 when Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed Illinois slave eking out a living as a petty thief in New Orleans, hops aboard a square-rigger to evade the prim Boston schoolteacher who wants to marry him. But the Republic , no riverboat, turns out to be a slave clipper bound for Africa. Calhoun, a witty narrator conversant wit

Format: Paperback

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